The last-ever Marvel Television series debuts on Hulu this week. Animated series Hit-Monkey is set to introduce one of the House of Ideas’ strangest characters⏤the titular simian assassin⏤to the screen for the first time. But it turns out that the show almost included a major villain previously featured in fellow Marvel TV series Daredevil. Marvel Studios blocked the series from using the character, however, which could be pretty telling.
In an interview with Murphy’s Multiverse, creators Will Speck and Josh Gordon revealed that Bullseye was supposed to feature in Hit-Monkey, as per his role in the original comics, but this didn’t work out “for various reasons.” The EPs are happy with how things ended up, however, as they got to work with Lady Bullseye instead.
“Yes, Bullseye,” Speck and Gordon revealed. “Bullseye was in the original issues of Hit-Monkey and that was who we originally thought we would use but for various reasons, we couldn’t. But Marvel offered us Lady Bullseye instead and we thought, ‘Wow. That’s so much more interesting since she’s a character we haven’t seen much of yet.’ We were thrilled that we got that pivot.”
The last time we saw Bullseye on screen was in Daredevil season 3, which explored the origin story of the master marksman, as played by Wilson Bethel. Infamously, Netflix cancelled the series before Bethel could officially take on his comic book mantle, so more from Bullseye is high up on the list of things fans want to see in the much-rumored Daredevil revival.
The news that Marvel forbade the character from being used in Hit-Monkey might suggest that the studio is saving Benjamin Poindexter for the DD reboot, which we’re told will star Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock once again and end up on either Disney Plus or Hulu. We’ve heard of similar executive vetoes happening before. For instance, certain pitches for What If…? were nixed as they clashed with upcoming MCU movies.
Hit-Monkey, featuring the voices of Fred Tatasciore, Jason Sudeikis, George Takei, and Olivia Munn, releases its first⏤and probably only⏤season this Nov. 17 on Hulu. Meanwhile, those waiting for more Daredevil will want to catch Spider-Man: No Way Home when it drops in theaters in December.
